Well, its been a while since I last had time to post, and we've a few piccies to pop up here too, but they will have to wait until lower down the post I'm afraid, but although its been a bad summer weather wise we've still done ok with the crops from our plot this year!
The balance sheet looks something like this.........
Total costs for this year to date £465 (£995 if you add on the new fridge freezer)
Total harvested crops approx values (as organic fresh veg from major supermarket type prices!) so far this year:-
Rhubarb (at £2 for 3 stalks as currently priced in Tescos) £ 75
Radish / lettuces / cnca salad leaf £ 40
Cucumbers £ 25
Herbs £ 15Strawbs £ 50+
Raspberries £ 30
Garlic £ 25
Maincrop Onions £ 20
Pickling Onions £10
Mange Tout £ 25
Tomatoes £ 50+
New potatoes £ 10
Maincrop Potatoes £ 25
Carrots / Parsnips £ 15
Brassicas £ 15
Broad Beans £ 25
French Beans £ 10
Peas £ 10
Courgettes £ 30
Peppers £ 20
Chillies £ 40
Aubergines £ 15
Cooking Apples £ 15
Eating Apples £ 5
Gherkins £ 3
Pumpkins / Squashes £ 40
Turnips £ 5
Swedes £ 5
Sweetcorn £ 40
Blackcurrants £ 5
Cherries £ 5
Total value of approx £ 703 so far, plus still lots more to harvest -
More Toms
More aubergines
More Peppers
More Cucumbers
About 330 leeks
About 85 Parsnips
2 Beds of Jerusalem Fartichokes
14 Sprout Plants
20 Cabbages
Still more Broccolli to harvest
Still a full bed of carrots
Still 20 celery plants growing nicely
I have a feeling we've still over £ 150 worth of crops to harvest yet!
Not a bad total for a first year, and next year we'll do even better, plus the costs are going to be a lot less, we currently recon about £50 for compost, seeds and spuds and rent total for the 2 plots of £60, so if we get a similar amount of produce next year we should be saving a lot! (and if we get a bumper year, then a lot more indeed!)
Shame we've not done as well as we'd hoped with the outdoor toms, the maincrop spuds and the sweetcorn (only about half of what we expected), but hopefully we'll do better with them next year!
We've struggled with all the weeds this year, the wet summer has proven to be a boon for weed germination, so its been a constant battle to try and keep on top of them, and at times we've been on the losing side, but overall I'd say we are happy with our results so far! There's 7 large jars full of jam, 2 large jars full of pickled onions, the freezers are full, and we've planty of tatties, garlic and onions still to eat, plus about 17 pumpkins for Halloween (and for eating) left yet! And as it says above still lots of things to harvest for the winter, so overall I'd say we were happy with our efforts, but roll on next year, as I know we are going to do much better!
Anyhow here's a few piccies of some of our produce, we entered some of these into the Grapevine / GYO Virtual Veg Show, and managed a Runner-Up position each, me for the Onions and Lee for the houseplant categories, which has both amazed and delighted us both! :D
3 Red Oni
ons, Runner up for Mrs D!
ons, Runner up for Mrs D!Our Indoor Orange Tree, runner up in houseplants for Mr D!
Some of our Pumpkins, there's another 7 or 8 we couldnt fit in and 3 that we'd already eaten, Mr D has found the most wonderful Pumpkin Pie recipe that means none of these will go to waste!
Our Banana Shallots, we managed to harvest about 40 to 50 of them, about a dozen or so were this size and the rest smaller, but very tasty, Many thanks to Dave (Pigletwillie) from the GYO Grapevine for the seeds!
2 of the outdoor cucumbers, they've not done fantastically well, but the Marketmore we had planted inside the greenhouse produced 30+ large, succulent and very tasty cucumbers, the biggest of which was 21" long!
A piccy of Mr D with our best Marketmore Cucumber! Just a shame he gave away the other we had almost as big before we got a piccy of the 2 of them, otherwise we may well have won the 2 cucumbers category in the GYO Virtual Veg Show! Ah well, there's always next year! :D
3 of the many, many peppers we''ve enjoyed from the 6 plants in the greenhouse this summer!
3 of the smaller aubergines we've had. We've had about 17 aubergines from 4 plants inside the greenhouse, very tasty, especially in home made Moussaka!
5 toms from the greenhouse, we didnt do as well as we'd hoped with toms, all the outdoor ones having succumbed to blight, but we have had a good harvest of cherry toms, so we've not had to buy any this summer and also have lots of frozen passatta in the freezer for the coming winter!
3 Parsnips!
Lots more of these on plot 1 still growing, so should be ok for the winter this year!
Well, thats all for the moment, I'll try and get some more piccies up as soon as I am able, but thanks for reading, and I hope your growing year has been as good (if not better) than ours!
